Re: Why bother with the Windows look ?
A better question to ask is, "What is the point of reinventing the wheel?" Zorin and several other projects take the view that reinventing the GUI because you can do it is silly. By keeping a similar look and feel they lessen the learning curve and make the user more comfortable with the distro. There is nothing wrong with the basic W7 GUI layout. Most of the tweaks are more personal preferences than anything else.